


In The Sunset Turning Red

by Phia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Minor Character Death, Not Beta Read, Not Britpicked, Summer, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 09:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1812994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phia/pseuds/Phia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen-year-old John Watson visits his grandmother's house near the woods for the first time after his father's death. He begins to exchange notes with a certain Sherlock Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Sunset Turning Red

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sick. Which is why this may have a few mistakes, it's multichaptered because I CBA to write the whole thing right now, and -

He can tell his mother didn’t think that this was a good idea, but for once, he doesn’t care. Her hands shake as she grasps his jacket and whispers simple instructions into his blonde hair. He does not try to embrace her back.

“John, you must be careful. Treat your grandmother with respect. She’s in a fragile place right now, poor thing, it’s probably a good idea that you’re trying to visit her, it’s such a good thing that you’re here for her. John, you must send letters, you must - “

“Let me go,” John growls, trying to wrench her tightening fingers away from the fabric. Her dirty blonde mane is falling into his eyes and face. She looks up at him, fingers clenched in the lapels of his jacket.

“Why do you do this to me?” Her voice cracks at the beginning of _do_ , leaving the remainder of the sentence whiny and pitiful. Good thing he was going away. He can’t tolerate this madness.

“Mum, the train’s here. I’ve got to go.” He picks up his suitcases, one handle in each of his hands, and plants a kiss on her cheek. They looks into each others’ eyes for a second, before he boards the train and takes a window seat on the far right. The train zooms down the tracks, and he tries to free his mind from thoughts of her, and thoughts of what is to come.

The porter quietly asks for his ticket; John flashes it at him. There is the soft undercurrent of the other dozen passengers reaching for their bags and murmuring among each other, but John is still able to drop into a swift sleep, the unconscious acknowledgement of company preventing him from encountering nightmares.

* * *

 

His grandmother had always liked tea with lemon, but as time ensued, her sense of taste had deteriorated and her tea was always too strong. She squeezed the juice out of at least two lemon slices each time, and John is left to consume the aftermath.

Unlike his other grandmother, his father’s mother is not one for unnecessary words. His eyes scan over her quickly as he tries valiantly to sip the oversweet tea. Her white blonde hair is secured in a bun at the nape of her neck, and she wears a long-sleeved white dress, even at the beginning of summer. Her blue-green eyes flash and her fingers twiddle from where she had crossed her hands over her paisley blue and white tablecloth.

“Your mother?” she questions, as he sets the cup down on his saucer. She attempts a light smile, because, she too, has planned this for John’s recovery. John smiles back before replying.

“She talks a lot. Won’t stop. She says she hates the quiet, ‘cause Harry’s always out with friends now, and school. When I’m home, I just - I’m not with her downstairs. So she turns on the radio, and calls people, and talks.”

Grandmother smiles and tilts her head, her bangs falling a little, brushing across her eyelashes. “Well, there’s going to be quiet here.”

John doesn’t doubt it.

* * *

 

The library has always been one of his favourite things about his grandmother’s house, ever since his last and supposedly final visit when he was thirteen, about two years ago, and found that he was more comfortable when his mouth was closed. The fireplace is scarcely used, because his grandmother has little to no sense of temperature. The three bookcases as tall as the ceiling and bursting with books on the right wall, however, are the centerpiece of the room. John manages an affectionate grin before kneeling down to his own shelf on the first one, all the way at the back of the room. He pulls out the book on _Flora and Fauna_ , yellowing pages and worn, white hardback cover a welcome sight before sitting on the pillow against the wall he had brought there from the sitting room when he was ten.

He traces his fingers over engraved drawings of flat, wide purple petals, stems and branches curling like veiny hands, eyes remembering the way that deer leap in the fields, startled by the slightest noises, absorbing the thick of plains like fire takes in houses.

When he awakens from the detail-induced trance, the sun outside the window is sinking away. The trip had eaten at most of his day, so he chews the pasta that his grandmother had left out for him on the kitchen counter, before walking up the creaking, white painted stairs to his designated room, where he presses himself gently over the white cotton sheets.

* * *

 

The police officer timidly knocks on the door with a slight hesitation, as if he is unsure that his noise may awaken a monster. John and his mother are perusing over different sections of the newspaper when the noise resounds through the kitchen. She stands, walks away from the kitchen table, walks down the hallway, opens the front door. In front of her is the man with the cap in his hands, looking dejected, the rain splashing onto his jacket from where an intense downpour is unrelenting outside. John wonders what the noise is - he can’t see himself, but he can see his form, a shadow against the candlelight as he walks down the hallway, stops a metre away from his mother. He can tell that the policeman can see him too, because now he’s shaking.

“I’m Gregory Lestrade, Scotland Yard police officer,” the man introduces, and his mother shouts over him saying “Is this the residence of Augustus Watson?”

“Where is he?” she shouts, and the rain crashes, like someone is hitting a tambourine, and the world outside is grey, the street deserted, the cars sitting like turtles, trying to scrape the ground. It is too much, all of the words, all of the things he could say and all of the things he can hear without actually paying attention.

And the man tells them where Pa is — in the morgue, but this time, it isn’t Grandfather. It is Pa himself, bagged, cold, and wet from the rain of the woods. He’d been visiting Grandmother down south, but John couldn’t go too, because he was still recovering from a lingering cough, stupid little returning thing, and now he wished that he wasn’t sick, or that he was lying on that counter and his father was here, reading about rugby and soccer statistics, laughing for his favourite players. Because John doesn’t have any favourite players, doesn’t have a favourite anything, because stardust does not confine itself to one body, that’s all they are, stardust and stardust always turns into something else and why can’t—

They talk, exchange details. John’s mother shuts the door with a little pang, and he feels like he should have never stepped into the hallway. She turns and doesn’t meet his eyes. Her hair has frizzed from the hot rain outside. They walk back to the kitchen, sit at the centre table and pretend that everything is normal for a little while. There is a loud clap of thunder outside, and John reads on about a war between two teams. His mother goes to the loo, presumably to cry, as she has had her head in her hands for the past ten minutes they’ve been sitting there, and he peels himself from the chair. He strides to the door, toes on his shoes, pulls on his jacket with a hood, opens and slams the door behind him, and just runs.

* * *

 

Grandmother’s has a cool, wet cloth draped over his forehead, and a cup of tea sitting on the white-painted nightstand. Apparently the darkness of his nightmares does not fit in with the white paint all over the white house, the bright sunlight streaming through the blinds, the gauzy dress she is wearing today.

“Your mother warned me about these.” She sighs, but not exasperatedly, only contemplating. John’s hands have not stopped shaking, but small tremors shudder through them. His school counselor had warned him about this about a month after February. No desire for physical therapy is strewn through his veins.

“Sorry Grandmother,” he apologizes, always polite, like his parents taught him. She smiles genuinely this time, kind eyes and brilliantly white teeth, the picture of youth for her age. If only he could persuade her to wear different colours, but she might lose the heavenly quality.

“It’s quite alright,” she answers, and pats him lightly on the chest with the damp hand that has been pressed to the cloth, before leaving the warm confines of his bed. “Breakfast is blueberry pancakes.”

After brushing his teeth in her guest bathroom, showering, and redressing, he sits down with her and eats pancakes. He tries to pretend that the blueberry syrup he drizzles over the pancakes does not remind him of his father’s blood.

* * *

 

It is a week before, a Sunday, when he tells his Grandmother he wants to return to the woods he used to explore as a little boy. She is laying in her king bed on the side closest to the door. After Grandfather died, she never slept on the side of the mattress against the wall. John avoided his grandmother’s house and therefore, the woods where his father had his heart attack. They all have their different ways of coping.

This is why he loves her: because she doesn’t say no. His mother definitely would. A cloth is strewn over her own forehead, an effect of a heavy headache. The humid air must be becoming too much for her. She says that it is fine, but only when she is awake, so tomorrow. Maybe she is waiting for her own police officer.

* * *

 

The woods are clearly disturbed, but in other ways, just as he has left them. The air is thick with the smell of pine needles and sage. It is nothing grand, no hidden lakes, just bundles of trees with a few paths reaching toward the middle, where John never strays past. It is scarcely visited by any other family on Grandmother’s street, living in wide-spaced, faded houses with grassy lawns, flowers bursting from their boxes. John relishes in the quiet, the only sounds being the chirping of birds and the rustling from animals through the leaves, which should frighten him, but they don’t. This is their home, after all.

A little past the edge of the woods, close to his grandmother’s house, is the space near the grey rock. It is clear that there was a body here, by the pattern of the dirt, hardened now, from where John’s father was lying in the mud before he was dragged away. Anyone else might consider it morbid, but John is beyond the point of caring as he sits in the little hollowed out space, pressing his back against the rock. He closes his eyes for what seems like a moment, and pictures his father moving through the woods almost silently. Picking up leaves to paint pictures of on his grandmother’s back porch. He always wore Liverpool jerseys, and John knew that he was wearing one on that day, even though the funeral was closed casket.

It is noon when John opens his eyes, according to the hands on his watch. It is noon and there is a folded up piece of paper next to his right foot. He shifts forward to pick it up and unfold it. Thin, black inked, cursive words are printed across the note like liquid diligence.

_**You shouldn't fall asleep in the woods. I see you've found the scene. Don’t think too much about it; it relaxes me as well. By chance, do you know what man died here? I’m simply curious. —SH** _

He doesn't know anything about a “SH," but maybe something about the nostalgia is nibbling at his sanity. Just in case, when he returns back to his grandmother’s house, he writes a note of his own in blue ink on the back of a napkin.

_**And you shouldn't leave notes to strangers. My Pa is the one who died. Who are you, besides your initials? I’m simply curious.** _

He hesitates for about a couple of seconds, before leaving his initials signed at the bottom as well.

* * *

 

There are a few notes passed between them each week, the unfolded ends tucked underneath the rock so that they don’t blow away. Each day, John paces around the woods and takes in the fresh summer air. He always returns to the rock, like a homing pigeon, leaving his own note and taking Sherlock’s. He doesn’t know what Sherlock does with his notes, but he keeps his at the bottom of his mostly unpacked suitcase, almost empty because it is in the middle of a still blazing July.

There are many things that interest him about this Sherlock Holmes character, but he does not once think about meeting him in person.

_**No, I don’t work in the police force. I’m a consulting detective. I help them when they’re out of their depth, which is always.** _

_**I can only deduce that you are a teenager from upper Churchtown. Heavy athlete, blond hair, short stature, lower middle class, average intelligence (don’t be offended), dominant right hand, shaking hands — that’s all I’ve got.** _

_**No one has ever said that my abilities are “amazing”. Thank you.** _

_**I’m fifteen too. My brother and I are staying with a few relatives down the lane. They are at least bearable. My parents couldn’t tolerate us this summer — our combined intelligence blows right over their heads.** _

_**A soldier and a surgeon, hmm? Very different professions. Hurting and healing.** _

_**I suppose you have a point, but I am not wrong.** _

They are all snarky and all signed and all in posh cursive, and John cannot help but admit that he is enchanted. He does not once think about meeting him in person, though, until he sees what he would do to find these notes in their familiar place.

It is raining again, just like on the night that dominates all of his nightmares and leaves him with various coloured cloths on his head in the morning. John had been too caught up with reading about gazelles around noon, his usual appointed time with the woods and with the notes of Sherlock Holmes. (Some gazelles run and jump high before fleeing their predators. The motion seems dramatic, as Sherlock seems dramatic.)

There is no drama greater than this, especially if you discount his mother’s weepy farewell at the train station.

“You can’t go out in this weather, John,” his grandmother croaks over a cup of her lemony tea that she is holding to her lips. “It’s pouring outside — I don’t want you out in the rain.”

“Did Mum warn you about this too?” His tone is surly and defiant, but he really wants, no, _needs_ , to go outside. Something about Sherlock is _normal_ , a pinprick of freedom in this devastation raging away like the storm outside.

“John, please attempt to be reasonable.” She sets the cup on the wrinkled tablecloth and looks up at him from across the table. “You cannot.”

He does not answer her before leaving just like he did on that night.

It is a little jogging he has to do before running back to the rock, and . . . the dirty white tennis shoe propped against it, the toe touching the mud and the heel against the rock. He does not have time to consider this because he notices his hands are not shaking, even though the leaves on the trees are shaking, and he is getting drenched with rain slipping down the back of his neck and flaring out at the top of his spine. But he picks up the shoe and jams his fingers inside to find the usual note, containing less than a paragraph of extremely vital information.

_**Excuse the unorthodox packaging, but I was told it was to rain today.** _

_**I propose that we meet, to ease any of your insecurities and to satisfy my increasing curiosity on how correct my deductions about you are. And, I have to admit, I do wish to see you. Tomorrow at noon, here? —SH** _

He uses his knee as a table to scrawl his own note on the back of a scrap of paper he created, tearing a blank piece of paper out of the _Wildlife of Asia_ book. In his excitement, he forgoes his signature.

_**Yes.** _

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT (13/9/17): I'm not continuing this work. Thanks to everyone who's paid it attention!


End file.
